Anbody have experience with WMA9 lossless?

I have taken the plunge and installed the WMP9 on my computer, making sure there is a restore point as the WMP version 9 installs like a gum falling on the hot sidewalk. There is no way to "uninstall" it (unless you restore back to a restore point.) Anyway...

I have come across two quirks with the player already, not specific to lossless.

1. I have a DTS 5.1 Surround DVD Autio of Sting, WMP9 won't recognize it. Are there any players able to recognize 6 channel audio? Am I doing something wrong?

2. Of the 6 albums I loaded so far, it could not find one in its database, which is ok because it is an oddball cd. It automatically suggested a John Coltrane CD. I said I will enter tags manually, which it accepted, but there is a button which says "update album info" which will overwrite your manual entries with a single click, without any warning or an undo option. Does that suck or am I doing something wrong again?

Anbody have experience with WMA9 lossless?

my biggest reasons not to use any kind Windows Media format are: 0) Cross-Platform support - have only just dabbled with *nix so far, but I do not want to get my music files locked in a format that *bsd/linux cannot handle or handle with great difficulty. Just one of the reasons I use FLAC rather than APE as my first choice now.and1) Players - I dislike eye candy for media players and really hate windows media player - nothing against who makes it, just how it looks/the size/the useless garbage I do not need on there/DRM/not to mention lack of support (or very weak) for basically every format I use or play with. Unless windows media player supports flac/ape/ogg-vorbis/MPC/AAC and I missed the news somehow.

Anbody have experience with WMA9 lossless?

Has anyone used the WMA9 Lossless codec? What are your experiences? How well does it work, how reliable is it, how is the sound quality?

And please, no Micro$oft ba$hing, I know that there is emotional animosity to MS here (with validity too ), but I want to hear the facts about this specific product.

And no, I do not care about how long it takes to encode/decode, its compression ratio, and its CPU usage.[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=120742"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Well, I just stumbled onto and tried it. It sounds awesome, and I'm hearing new parts of my music. Sometimes, though, on my older Athlon 750 Mhz system with 128 MB, it sputters and stuff. However, the highest-quality vbr-"variable bit rate" format sounds nearly as good, with a much lower file size. Plus, it plays on my Pocket PC, and sounds inCREDIBLE through my tape adapter. I'm using it for all of my Pocket Music from now on.

Anbody have experience with WMA9 lossless?

those "new parts" of your music are actually artefacts. that's not a good thing. this is assuming you're using WMA lossy. if you're using lossless and hearing a difference, then you probably turned the equalizer on by mistake.

if you really think (EQ and lossy aside) that there's any difference at all (i'm not talking audible difference, but rather any kind of difference whatsoever), then you must be either deluded or trolling.

please read the HA TOS, and make an attempt to understand what lossless coding means. it means it is equivalent to the origiinal data (the PCM that was ripped off the CD).

by the way, if you think i'm wrong, please post a sample of the original ripped CD and the WMA version so we can all compare them ourselves. less than 30 seconds is fine as far as copyright restrictions go.

Anbody have experience with WMA9 lossless?

Large advantage, it can play in any XP machine, no need to have someone install software to play back the file.[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=246023"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

XP doesn't come with WMP9 or 10, which is needed for WMA Lossless playback.[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=246093"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

WMP9 is included in SP2, and i (hope) everyone installs new service packs. Also all new sold computers have SP2 pre-installed, and all new copy's of Windows XP that is sold comes with SP2 slipstreamed, so..

And using Windows Update is alot easier than finding DirectShow filters for this and that codec for people new to this stuff.

Anbody have experience with WMA9 lossless?

Well, I just stumbled onto and tried it. It sounds awesome, and I'm hearing new parts of my music. Sometimes, though, on my older Athlon 750 Mhz system with 128 MB, it sputters and stuff. However, the highest-quality vbr-"variable bit rate" format sounds nearly as good, with a much lower file size. Plus, it plays on my Pocket PC, and sounds inCREDIBLE through my tape adapter. I'm using it for all of my Pocket Music from now on.[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=245802"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

You seem to have fallen victim of horrible monster called Placebo.(esp. 'sounds inCREDIBLE' bit suggests that) You ought to read FAQ,TOS and some other posts on the forums for info about comparing formats.Anyway, VBR WMA 9 is not WMA Lossless. It certainly isn't suitable for archiving, has too many corner cases.(See last rjamorim's listening test, easy to find)Not that I'd use it anyway:1) It takes too long to encode.2) It isn't the most efficient lossless codec. (Optimfrog is AFAIK)3) It isn't open source, has little multi-platform support.4) It has no hardware support (FLAC does)Remember, WMA support doesn't mean WMA Lossless support...5) It requires lots of CPU time to decode, unlike FLAC, for few percent of file size drop.6) Is it so hard to find a DirectShow decoder for different formats?If so, use Foobar2000, Winamp, QCD or most anything else than WMP.7) DRM is evil. (Don't enable it) Micro$oft is evil too.